Plastic bags allowed on Hilton Head during pandemic will be banned again. Here’s when
If your reusable bags have been in hibernation during the coronavirus pandemic, it’s time to find them again.
Hilton Head Island will reinstate its ban on single-use plastic bags on July 7, according to an announcement from Town Manager Steve Riley.
The town relaxed enforcement on the ban during the coronavirus pandemic so businesses could adjust to higher volumes of takeout traffic.
Most grocery stores stuck with paper bags throughout the pandemic, although many smaller stores and restaurants took advantage of the temporary change.
But right after the July 4th holiday weekend, businesses and restaurants will be back under the restrictions of the bag ban, which allow paper or thick, reusable plastic bags for shoppers.
Violating the ban is punishable by a fine of up to $100 for the first violation, $200 for a second violation within any 12-month period and $500 for every additional violation within any 12-month period.
Coronavirus pauses plastic bag bans nationwide
Hilton Head’s move to relax the ban on single-use plastic bags followed a national trend.
In New Hampshire, Gov. Chris Sununu issued an emergency order banning reusable bags and requiring stores to use plastic or paper instead, according to the Boston Herald.
In Maine, The Natural Resources Council announced that Gov. Janet Mills delayed to Jan. 15 the start of that state’s plastic bag ban. It was supposed to begin on April 22 — Earth Day.
In California, customers no longer are required to pay the 10-cent tax on plastic bags, and The Mercury News reported that at least two Bay Area counties have prohibited reusable bags altogether.
“The thinking with the reusable bags is that when they are handled by different people and moved among different environments, it’s possible they could be a carrier of the virus,” Preston Merchant, a spokesman for the San Mateo County health department, told The Mercury News. “It does attach to surfaces. Moving towards non-reusable bags means fewer people will have touched them.”
Moves to relax or repeal bag bans got a boost from The Plastics Industry Association, which The New York Times reported wrote the Department of Health and Human Services in late March “requesting that the department publicly declare that banning single-use plastics during a pandemic is a health threat.”
Recyclable bags, The New York Times reported, have been called “petri dishes for bacteria and carriers of harmful pathogens,” by at least one plastics industry group.
The science of coronavirus and shopping bags
Are your reusable bags safe?
An oft-cited study by the U.S. National Institutes of Health found that the coronavirus can remain on plastics and stainless steel surfaces for up to three days.
But Dr. Lisa Maragakis, senior director of infection prevention at Johns Hopkins, wrote in a recent article that the virus doesn’t survive well on soft surfaces like fabric shopping bags. It weakens and dies when it’s outside of the human body, she wrote.
And Maragakis said although the virus can live for several days on plastic, less than 0.1% of the starting virus material is present after 72 hours, which means it carries very little risk of infection.
